


Paint Peeling Back

by orphan_account



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: F/F, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-09-06 21:41:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20298367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: It is, Catra knows, a dare:You won’t. You won’t.Please don’t.She doesn’t.





	Paint Peeling Back

Catra hears before she sees: a cough. Rustling from one of the buildings.

The remains of the buildings, anyway. At this point they’re all little more than smoke and rubble.

And. Yet. _Apparently._ There are still survivors.

Worthless.

Every last one of them. Couldn’t destroy one little village even with an army of First Ones enhanced tech backing them up. No wonder the war has been at a complete standstill. No wonder Hordak doesn’t trust her. No wonder he graciously took time out of his busy, busy, always so busy day to paint her body with bruises and blood, to explain exactly how worthless he thinks she is, and then throw her out into the night with no more than an order to _take care of the cleanup_.

If she can’t even get her troops to manage _this_? Maybe she is. Worthless. Maybe that explains her entire life.

Whatever. At least it isn’t more paperwork. Ever since Scorpia grew a backbone somewhere underneath all that carapace and stopped letting Catra pawn it off onto her, that side of the job has been…

Well. It’s _been._

And now she has a mysterious noise to investigate. She can solve it, fix it, blame it on Kyle, maybe. Get at least one good thing out of this whirlwind of failures. So, she climbs into the rubble.

And then she sees it.

“_Oh._”

The word — the noise, really — escapes as barely more than a gasp, because Catra can see barely more than a shadow hiding in the dark of what’s left of the roof. But she _knows_. She knows who it is. She knows by the way they breathe. Knows by the way they jolt awake, jolt to consciousness, and reach for a sword that isn’t there. The way those piercing blue eyes shine through the dark bright enough to freeze Catra in place. Choke the air from her throat. Root her to the ground.

“_Adora._”

It feels like being dropped from the sky hard enough that Catra nearly collapses onto hands and knees when Adora looks her up and down. When she gives no response beyond dropping her head back between her knees. But Catra keeps her balance. Just barely. Instead of falling, she chokes for breath, and Adora wraps her arms back around herself.

It should, Catra knows, make her happy to see Adora like this. Adora beaten, and broken, and useless is everything she’s wanted with every fiber of her being ever since Adora _left. _But. This is new. For once, Catra isn’t to blame. _She_ should be the one making Adora look like this. Not some… Some random nameless mech. Some random faceless soldier. Some bit character in a story that hasn’t ever been theirs to tell. No one, _no one_ else should ever be allowed to see the aftermath of Adora’s hurt but _her_. It doesn’t belong to anyone else.

And, yet, here Adora is. Dirty hair spilling down, down, down, jacket torn and frayed, thrown uselessly over her shoulders like some too-thin shield against the same cold and dark that she sought out in the first place. Here Adora is, _hiding_, and it isn’t Catra’s fault.

Catra slowly flexes an ankle. She doesn’t move.

She needs, desperately, a reset on whatever this is. On all of it. She needs time to find whoever did this and make them pay so that, this time, when she enters this broken down shack and sees Adora huddled up in her sad little corner without her friends or her precious She-Ra sword to protect her, she can drawl out her usual calm, collected, “_Hey, Adora,_” like she always does, and Adora won’t look away, because Adora will be _angry,_ and everything will be normal again.

Wishing isn’t enough to make it happen.

Obviously.

So she moves forward. Steps closer. Too slow, maybe, but whatever is happening here feels like it might break if she makes enough noise, so slow is all she’s willing to give.

Adora doesn’t look up. She barely even breathes.

Catra keeps going. She stalks slowly, carefully forward until she’s standing in front of Adora; looking down on Adora; nudging Adora’s arms open with nothing more than the gentle, insistent touch of one knee.

Adora answers without question, and it almost feels like always. Her arms slide down and away, hands floating restlessly above the dirt and the rock for a single brief moment before Catra slides a leg forward, into the gap Adora has given her. Her hands flex open, closed, and settle onto the ground. And Catra, still unsure about all of it; still scared to do anything more than wait, _waits_. She waits, only one half of herself presented because something somewhere in some distant corner of her mind is screaming, pleading with the rest of her to keep open the option of escape. It could still be a trap. Never trust anything, anyone, not even this. Not even Adora. Never again.

Though, when Catra lets herself hear the thought; when she lets herself recognize it, she ignores it. Reaches forward. Closer. Out of spite, maybe; she has no use for an instinct like that when Adora is like this, and she rides out that feeling, lets it course through her as she stretches each and every finger one after the other after the other as she mulls over her next move.

And she decides.

And she moves. And she threads her fingers into Adora’s hair, brushing, running, trailing them over Adora’s scalp, forward and back, and left and right, and over and over and over, claws scraping dull over skin and through familiar, always familiar, forever familiar, strands of filthy blonde hair.

At first, none of it gets a reaction.

But then, that’s always been Adora. Even when they were _close_. Even then. Adora always fought for control over contact like this until the last possible second. Now, too, Adora is fighting; now, too, Catra feels that resistance struggling to burn its way up through the pads of her fingers.

Eventually though, like always, Adora loses.

She gives in with a shiver and a gasp, and suddenly, unceremoniously, her head drops against Catra’s thigh. Suddenly her palms are gripping gently, so softly, _too _softly, at the backs of Catra’s legs. Moving away and back again, over and over because of _course_ Adora still thinks she’s fighting even when she’s already lost.

All it takes to make her settle to still is to scratch just slightly harder. It’s all it ever takes.

And.

That’s all there is. For so long that Catra loses track of everything but the sound of Adora breathing in, out, and the steady white noise of boots and machinery stomping outside. Pretending to follow orders. Acting like the entire platoon isn’t five minutes away from abandoning the scrap and the broken down machinery and inventing some story about how the rebellion broke it all too much to take back.

They probably won’t even wait that long when they realize Catra is gone. Close enough to gone not to matter, anyway. She’ll probably have another round of _discipline_ ready and waiting back in the Fright Zone for bothering to investigate.

Something in the air, in _them_ changes with the realization. Maybe Catra gets restless, or maybe Adora gets curious, but some indescribable thing changes far sooner than Catra might have liked, even if she still doesn’t have the first idea why she’s _here_ or why she’s treating Adora like this. Adora deserves the pain. Adora deserves worse. But still something brushes those facts away like they’re absolutely weightless, and the air itself changes before she can stop it.

Adora looks to the side. Rolls her head back against the wall and redirects her gaze firmly, completely, _away_.

Catra doesn’t want that.

She brings her other hand to Adora’s hair, holds her as firmly as she can while her every nerve in her body still refuses to be anything more than _gentle. _It doesn’t work. It was never going to work. Adora flinches further away and keeps her eyes laser focused on the dark, and the cold, and the everything but her.

Always, always, _always_ looking away, that Adora.

So Catra swings her other foot forward. She shoves Adora’s legs open just that much wider until her grip on Adora’s hair is solid, and firm, and no matter how badly she twitches, or flinches, or winces, or turns, there isn’t anywhere left for her to hide. Her grip is tighter, and tighter, and she’s kneeling into Adora’s lap, fingers petting slow and soft like she isn’t still using every bit of her strength to make Adora _look at her._

It turns out not to matter. None of it. Because Catra presses her forehead to Adora’s, drowns out her vision of everything else that might matter, and Adora _still _doesn’t meet her eyes. Adora falls completely and utterly slack and she _still _doesn’t look. Fingers knot tighter into hair, and Catra moves close, close, close, until the hands on Adora’s scalp are hands on the back of her neck, arms wrapped around her throat like a collar, pulling her closer and burying her face against the warm skin of her chest as Catra presses her lips to the top of Adora’s head.

Not a kiss.

Never a kiss.

Just more contact. Just more comfort. Just enough to make Adora calm.

And once more, Adora tries to pull away.

This time, it isn’t a flinch. This time, she pulls away and Catra _lets _her. Far enough that she can look up to Catra’s mouth, Catra’s lips, eyes half open and heavy with some sort of _something_ sitting on the edge of her irises. The weight of that gaze pulls Catra down to sitting. It pulls her body lower and lower until her legs are threaded underneath Adora’s knees, wrapping around her back, behind her waist, holding on just the right side of tight enough to hurt.

Apparently — finally — satisfied with that, Adora buries her face in Catra’s neck.

And maybe Catra still doesn’t know what’s happening, but she knows enough to know what that means. It means what it has always meant: _hurt me with your mouth. Help me feel something new. Help me focus. Help me calm down._

It only really, truly, occurs to her in that moment that maybe, just maybe, she does know what’s happening. 

It could just as easily be her imagination. It could also not. It doesn’t matter. Not really. But, still. Something, Catra knows, must have hurt Adora worse than she ever has, worse than she ever even _tried_, and she’s not — she _can’t_ let that be. Not when it’s always been her. The only one capable of hurting Adora this badly has always been _her. _Adora only ever slows down when Catra is the source of her pain. When Catra is the one to find some needle thin point to prod and to poke until she’s crazy enough with rage to burn herself into dust.

Yet, the Adora sitting here now is miles past that. The Adora wrapped up in her arms, wrapped all around her, and barely still holding herself together is Adora at a full blown _stop. _And sure, maybe no one has ever managed pulling Adora down further than her, but that doesn’t mean nobody ever came close.

There was always Shadow Weaver.

Their first monster in the dark, under the bed, around the corner and always hiding just out of sight. The one who hurt Catra with pointless weekly _discipline sessions, _and who hurt Adora when that — inevitably, because it was always inevitable — stopped working.

And that isn’t, wasn’t, will never be right.

Adora should be soaring, flying like the birds in the sky, because that’s just the sort of person she is. Just like it’s always been Catra’s job to chase after her. Catra has always been the only one who deserved to snatch her back down into the dirt and the mud, because Catra has always been the only one to see Adora for who she truly is. The only one to see and to know with every fiber of muscle in her heart that Adora is fragile. Adora has always been hers to break.

When they were kids, Shadow Weaver caught a glimpse of that desire. One was all it took. She ripped Adora out of the sky week after week and tossed her, broken, and mangled, and short a few memories at Catra’s feet for no reason other than that she felt Catra deserved a new sort of lesson. Her obsession with Adora was all she ever needed to convince herself she could handle it.

She could. _Did_. Adora always handled it. But never for any reason Shadow Weaver might have been able to invent. Adora could always handle it because Catra was there for her in the after. Because Catra was there to give her a place to lose herself. To fall apart. Catra was the only one she ever allowed the chance to break her.

They could have — should have — left well enough alone, the both of them. Grit their teeth and muddled through. Rose up the ranks of the Horde until they ruled the world together. Until they could act out every last one of their pent up desires for vengeance on everyone who ever so much as _thought_ to hurt them. Until Catra was the only one left in Etheria capable of hurting Adora. They could have. But, then, Catra supposes, that isn’t them. Wasn’t them. Has never been them.

Adora left.

Adora left, and Catra threw Shadow Weaver into a prison cell, and proceeded to prove herself completely and utterly worthless. And they both sought out new monsters to replace the void left by the absence of the old.

They found them, too. Which is precisely the problem: one of those monsters has nearly broken Catra’s toy.

“Adora,” Catra says. It feels like enough. _Adora._ Her name has always meant so many things. If Adora wants to hurt, Catra knows this routine enough to oblige. Knows it by heart, in fact. Teeth sink into the crook of her neck hard enough to break skin, and then harder still. Hard enough to taste blood, to feel the wet give of muscle and sinew, tendon and bone. Enough to make Adora regret ever asking to be hurt at all.

Somehow, it has the opposite effect.

Whatever dam Adora cobbled together to just barely hold back her feelings breaks as easily as her flesh. She gasps an empty, strangled noise and buries her nose and her lips into Catra’s hair. Grit teeth, short breaths, and warm, warm lips. She gasps in one second, and in the next, she’s sobbing. Clutching onto Catra with both hands and completely at the whims of every last emotion rocking its way through her, and out of her, and into the cold of the dark.

_Leave,_ a voice, faint in the back of Catra’s mind, whispers. _Leave her. Like she left you._

She should. She knows. This new monster isn’t Catra’s business so long as Adora stays gone. But…

Instead, she bites harder. Instead, Adora knocks Catra’s headpiece all the way off. It clatters to the ground.

Neither of them bother to stop it. To catch it.

And Catra’s body is already moving on muscle memory. Soothing, petting, stroking Adora back down to something almost steady enough to be steady. Relying on flashes of what happier days still look like in her mind when she’s not busy trying to _forget_ long enough to make Adora suffer. Because she hasn’t ever seen Adora this bad. She’s never seen her this hopeless. Not even in the space between those happier days. Not even years and years and years ago, when Catra was _convinced _all the way down to the marrow in her bones that she was seeing Adora at the lowest point in her life. Ice cold burns on her wrists and blood on her lips, tentacled, puckered pink wounds across her back, and a burning desire to make Catra touch her _here, there, more, more, more _because her memories, for once, were intact. A desire to lose herself until she _wasn’t_ herself, wasn’t anything, not anymore, and maybe not ever again.

Eventually, the real Adora — the one that doesn’t have the luxury of existing in some ageless, timeless corner of Catra’s memories — settles. Eventually, the silence returns. In such force that even the sound of troops just past the walls are gone.

Catra exhales, drags her bloodstained lips up and down the side of Adora’s neck. Over dried trails of tears, the corner of her mouth, and the line of her jaw, and all the way back to the dip of her collarbones. And she stops. She hovers, mouth held the barest fraction of a breath away from Adora’s pulse point. Close enough to feel Adora trembling. Close enough that every word she might think to say causes her teeth and her breath to brush against still fresh wounds, still wet blood.

“I should capture you,” Catra rasps.

Adora nods. It’s all she does. She nods, and teeth scrape against too-hot, broken skin not yet scabbed, blood racing, racing, racing, just beneath the surface. And, _oh, _how like her to know. How like her to understand that Catra doesn’t mean it even all this time after she left. That Catra only wants to find some way to bring back the Adora she knows.

How infuriating.

Catra doesn’t stop.

“All I’d have to do is raise my voice,” she says, and Adora shivers head to toe. It nearly convinces her to stop. But she doesn’t. Of course she doesn’t. _Nearly_ has never been enough. “That’s all. And Horde soldiers would have us surrounded.”

Once more, Adora nods.

Only, this time, the motion feels distinctly less like a nod. This time, it feels far more like she’s nuzzling closer. Seeking out comfort like she barely even registers her nails digging steadily further into Catra’s shoulders and drawing enough blood to rival Catra’s work on her neck.

It is, Catra knows, a dare: _You won’t. You won’t._

_Please don’t._

She doesn’t.

“There wouldn’t be any escape for you, Adora. Never again,” she says, and there is a fire, a flame, somewhere on the edge of her voice. Or maybe there isn’t. It could just as easily be her imagination. Because Adora doesn’t react.

It doesn’t matter.

She bites down on Adora’s throat again, clamping her jaw hard enough to make Adora whimper. No use thinking about it. No use thinking about anything but re-breaking broken skin like all of their stupid mental wounds finally made physical. Never any use for anything else with Adora.

This time, she doesn’t linger. This time, Catra pulls her legs back to herself with a deep, deep burning breath. She shakes herself free of Adora’s frantic attempts to stay in her arms, and she goes. She leaves her, a crumpled mess on the ground.

Adora never stays. Not really. This is just Adora looking for one more way to leave. This is just Catra going first.

No use saying anything else.

No use thinking anything else.

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes, this,


End file.
